THE SHOW
starring John Gilbert, Renee Adoree and Lionel Barrymore
PICTURE PLAY MAGAZINE
June, 1927
"The Show" doesn't quite get over, on the whole, as fully as John Gilbert's vivid acting as Cock Robin deserves. It is a melodrama of a Budapest side show, and Gilbert plays the barker - vain, cruel, unscrupulous - with authority and zest. It is quite unlike any of his other roles, and one can easily understand his enthusiasm for it. This makes it doubly regrettable that the picture moves slowly and lacks an arresting quality, in spite of a novel background and colorful hocus-pocus on the stage of the side show. Renee Adoree, photographed to her disadvantage, plays Salome, Cock Robin's inamorata, but for some reason she is listless. There is the villainous Greek, done by Lionel Barrymore, a stupid country girl who blindly adores Cock Robin, and an old man, who is made to believe by Salome that his criminal son is a brave soldier. It is her kind deception that seemingly brings about a great reformation in Cock Robin's character, when he discovers it; but it left me unconvinced of anything except the scenario writer's hard work, and Gilbert's efforts to vivify it.
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